19. Alex

Chapter 19

Alex

I hated this guy.

His smile was so bright it burned my retinas. He greeted everyone like they were best friends, even the people he'd never met, bestowing weird nicknames. Even in boring Nike workout clothes, the women's eyes tracked him like he wore a Tom Ford suit. He was too cheerful, too peppy, and way too muscular.

He called Grace ‘ Gacelita, ' and had a stupid handshake with Kate. It took me a moment to place the feisty brunette as Mallory's high school friend after she greeted me, "I thought your corporate overlords would have sent the Mother Ship to abduct you by now." She said that she thought of him like a big brother, even though I'd known her as an awkward teenager.

And what kind of name was ‘Cruz,' anyway?

Before class began, Grace checked in with the students, many of whom she knew from yoga classes, then introduced Cruz, who bounced on his toes like a newly housebroken puppy waiting to be uncrated.

He shared basic self-defense principles, asked Grace to help him demonstrate two disarming techniques, then turned on rock music and split us up into pairs to practice, and she came to my mat without hesitation .

To test out the disarming techniques, I wrapped my arms around Grace. The music thrummed around us, her body tense as I gently pinned her arms at her sides. She gripped my wrist and twisted to break free.

Her hair flew into her face, her chest rising and falling as she smiled up proudly and released my wrist. I brushed the flyaway out of her face, allowing myself a moment to let my thumb trace her cheekbone —

The music cut off abruptly, leaving the room in stunned silence.

Grace's eyes traveled over my shoulder and widened dramatically, those full lips dropping into a rare frown.

Then came the familiar elitist tone: "I'm here for Alexander Clarke."

I braced myself and turned slowly.

Victoria Blackstone looked out of place in the yoga studio, wearing a silk blouse tucked into a charcoal pencil skirt, strawberry blonde hair in a tight bun. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding up the speaker's power cord. I caught a flash of rage before a cool mask dropped over her eyes. Her Resting Bitch Face challenged anybody to tell her she was out of line.

"I think I'm in love," Cruz murmured from a few feet behind us.

"I think you're in heat," Kate taunted.

Victoria's calculating gray eyes narrowed. My mouth snapped shut. Her heel tapped twice. My chin lifted. Her arms crossed, power cord dangling from her fingertips.

"Hola, Cobrita ," Cruz said smoothly, approaching with open palms to break our nonverbal negotiation.

Oh shit, I couldn't wait for her reaction to him interrupting her intimidation stare with a cutesy nickname. Victoria had been raised so formally that nicknames were an insult, never allowing her to be a Vickie or a Tori … God help the men who called her 'Ginger' or ‘Red.'

I didn't know what the hell a ‘ Cobrita ' was, but based on Victoria's sour expression, she did. She closed her eyes, a hurricane gaining speed for maximum destruction upon landfall. When her eyes opened and landed on Cruz's face, I expected one of her infamous ball-withering glares.

But when her eyes opened, the storm cooled unexpectedly.

"Can't you see I'm in the middle of something? "

"With all due respect, I was in the middle of something first," he said, gesturing around the studio to the class that she'd interrupted, then pointed to the power cord. "And you disrespected the Foo Fighters."

"What the hell is a Foo Fighter?" When he scrubbed his hand over his face, she sniped, "Nevermind, I don't have time for this."

She swiveled back to me, cheeks flushed. "Your disappearing act set things back. Negotiations restart tomorrow in Manhattan. If you're not there …"

If I was at fault for this deal crumbling, my career was over.

And if I hadn't gone MIA for three days, she wouldn't have had to consult my phone's location then pick up my truant ass on a Sunday to force me to do the job for which I was exorbitantly paid.

"Now, Alexander."

I reached for a stiff hug from Grace. When she felt me swallow back my frustration, she whispered into my ear, "It's ok, Alex. Go."

I breathed in the scent of her hair and whispered my thanks.

Victoria tapped her nude pump impatiently.

When I released Grace, Victoria dropped the power cord and walked out, heels clacking against the wood floors, and I followed like a chastised child.

I could run this negotiation in my sleep.

I'd spent weeks pouring over these documents, they were flawless. For days, a dozen people bartered around this bland Midtown hotel conference room eating soggy catered sandwiches. We were trapped in negotiation purgatory, overlooking Manhattan's skyscrapers, insulated from the snowfall outside the floor-to-ceiling glass. I was pretty sure Christmas hadn't passed because the food table would have been more festive. The only sign of the impending holiday was hearing that cheesy Mariah Carey song every time I took a piss … but hey, at least it wasn't ‘ Feliz Navidad. '

Knowing that I'd left San Francisco in a rush, Victoria packed several of my business suits. After two weeks without them, the ties felt like they were choking me. The trousers were uncomfortably tight — maybe I'd enjoyed the pies and burritos too much.

I found myself longing for the sweatpants upstairs in my hotel room, counting down the minutes until these papers were finally fucking signed.

This deal should have closed last week, but these assholes wanted their egos stroked … and they weren't the only ones who wanted my stroking.

Across the walnut table, the target company's merger specialist licked her lips and arched her back, making it clear how she wanted to celebrate her clients' inevitable submission. Victoria's response was more subtle: a claiming hand on my forearm, a lingering whisper in my ear.

Normally this was foreplay. When the deal was signed, I'd take the more convincing one back to my hotel room.

Spoiler: It was always the cunning redhead.

A decade ago, we didn't need legal foreplay. Victoria and I lived together in law school, commuting from our Palo Alto apartment to classes, studying all evening, having exhausted mediocre sex, and then restarting the cycle. Over those summers, Nick crashed in our second bedroom while working at the San Jose Shakespeare Festival. He'd force us to take a break, climbing onto the roof deck to drink cheap beer under the stars.

Then Victoria brought me as a date to a family wedding, and a drunken rant from her grandfather's trophy wife revealed Victoria was the heiress to a real estate empire. Her wealth hadn't shocked me — her boarding school stories and name brand clothing had given away her background.

The true betrayal was the effort she'd put into hiding her grandfather's fame. She apologized the only way she knew, with expensive gifts like high-end luggage, silk ties, and my gold watch.

I broke up with her and moved out of her place … into the apartment across the hall. She'd covertly bought the building and offered me rent so low that my wallet won out over my pride. It wasn't easy, living and working so closely with my ex-girlfriend, but I didn't have the luxury to cut her out of my life. She'd pulled strings to get me this prestigious job, and I didn't have the connections to leverage into a different firm without a huge pay cut.

After she realized I wasn't exiling her, she relaxed — if Victoria ever ‘relaxed.' She stopped hiding the business skills she'd gleaned from her strategic father, molding me into a world-class negotiator, second only to her.

That's how the two of us ended up here, sent to close this ugly acquisition. Victoria came to life at tables like this. If she'd been dispatched to Potsdam, Truman wouldn't have had to drop the atomic bombs. Every mediation was her war room, and when she won, she claimed her spoils.

So although the opposing counsel was eye-fucking me, Victoria wasn't threatened. After the day's negotiations ended, we huddled in a two-bedroom suite upstairs plotting the next day's strategy, catching only a few hours of sleep. Victoria was confident that once champagne started flowing, our private celebration would end in one of those bedrooms. No foreplay required — god, I can't remember the last time I had the energy for foreplay. It was the only time we had sex anymore, to burn the adrenaline before we crashed from exhaustion.

That was how we'd operated for years: Close the deal, open your legs, then pass out and pretend it didn't happen, because that's what always happens.

But it felt different this time.

I should revel in the thrill of the volley. I should want to go for the jugular.

But I didn't want to be here.

‘What's your problem?' She scrawled in my leather notebook, her blue ink saturating the margins of nearly every page.

‘We're in a circle jerk,' I scrawled back.

‘So finish it. Man up and call their bluff.'

She knew I would have already cut off this bullshit if I'd had my regular aggressive streak. Normally I could pull this off on only a few hours of sleep. But at night, I'd been plagued by dreams of chasing something evasive. In my dreams, I'd run between familiar rooms — my bedroom, Mom and Dad's foyer, my office, Mallory's yoga studio, Carol's kitchen — but couldn't catch it, and woke up more tired than when I'd crashed .

I interrupted the client's rant, standing assertively so that my chair scraped against the floor and declared something monumental waste of time , and something ready to sign come find me .

I didn't hear my familiar words, having been coached by Victoria years ago on how to deliver them for maximum impact. She told me it has to be me who leads this part, that she'd be seen as a shrieking woman who needed to change her tampon, but when I do it, it closes deals.

But now there was an extra edge to my voice. Because this time I meant them.

If I could close the deal and get out of this goddamn room, I'd take my own victory spoils. For two weeks, I'd had a taste a freedom, a taste of hope, a taste of Grace … and I was going to stop denying myself what I deserved.

Forget the suite upstairs, my prize was upstate.

My hand hovered over the doorknob when the client finally picked up a pen, testing my resolve.

My voice was dry and humorless. "Can we get this over with? Mrs. Claus is waiting for me up north."

Victoria's jaw ticked. Was it because I went off script, betraying my impatience? Or could she feel her victory sex slipping away, along with her claim on me?

The client met my gaze, wondering if another delay could sweeten the deal for him. I stood at the door, legs wide, arms crossed.

If I can get him to sign, I told myself, if I win, I can go to Grace.

I planned all my next steps: Go upstairs and pack. Make an appearance at the hotel bar where Frank Hamilton, one of the firm's two equity partners, will be waiting to shake hands and take the credit. He'll slap me on the back and say, ‘Great work in there, son,' and expect me to behave like his father figure praise means the world to me because it normally does. Except this time, I won't care, because soon I'll get to spend time with my actual father, and Bruce Clarke beats Frank Hamilton any day. But I'll give him the credit he expects, then throw him a curveball by telling him I won't be back in the office until January.

Fuck this. If I close this deal, I go home.

I hit the client with my best ‘I'm not fucking around here' face.

He signed the document.

I walked out.